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To Japan.

Topics: classic

Simple you were, and good. No kindlier heart         Beat than the heart within your gentle breast.         Labour you had, and happiness, and rest,      And were the maid of nations. Now you start      To feverish life, feeling the poisonous smart         Upon your lips of harlot lips close-pressed,         The lips of her who stands among the rest      With greasy righteous soul and rotten heart.      O sunrise land, O land of gentleness,         What madness drives you to lust's dreadful bed?      O thrice accursed England, wretchedness         For ever be on you, of whom 'tis said,      Prostitute plague-struck, that you catch and kiss         Innocent lives to make them foully dead!

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"Simple you were, and good. No kindlier heart..."

"To Japan." is a quintessential example of Francis William Lauderdale Adams's signature style... ### Why We Love This Line At Linespedia, we believe that poetry is the ultimate sanctuary for the soul...

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"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

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